Unexpected
by Lady Kes
Summary: Abby Sciuto wanted a quiet, murder-free vacation in Oxford. The universe had other plans. No spoilers for NCIS or Lewis.


Oxford was supercool and not just in the weather sense, although it was definitely that too, even in May. Explaining to everyone why she'd wanted to go there of all places had been hard, but it made perfect sense to her, and that was all that really counted on a solo vacation. She wanted to see the Bodleian library, explore the Radcliffe Camera, and maybe even figure out why it was called that when there were no DSLRs anywhere that she could see except for the ones the tourists were carrying. Most of all she wanted to have a vacation without any dead bodies other than the ones that had been dead for zillions of years and therefore didn't count.

Ha. The universe laughed at the plans of men (and women), and so now she was patiently waiting to be interviewed about the mid-to-late-twenties Caucasian female who'd been found in a boxwood hedge with obvious blunt force trauma to the left temporal lobe, probably caused by something kind of cylindrical. She couldn't estimate time of death without a liver temp, but rigor hadn't apparently set in yet so it probably wasn't that long. She felt really sorry for the woman, dying like that, whether she'd died there in the hedge or not, which Abby obviously couldn't determine without analyzing the soil for blood and checking for livor mortis.

She couldn't analyze anything, though, and instead she was patiently waiting to be interviewed for the second time because her apparent knowledge of the body and its outward condition had made the very nice Detective Constable nervous and she'd said Abby would need to wait and talk to the DS about this, who or whatever a DS was other than a portable gaming system. So Abby sat obediently on a bench as directed and stared at Oxford. There was an interesting church over there with a really striking rose window, and she was definitely going to go visit it. That would have to wait until she was done convincing Oxford's finest that she wasn't a murderess, obviously, and she smiled as a tall, skinny guy in a very well-tailored suit approached her with purpose. He didn't smile back, of course, but she didn't expect him to. There was no smiling at potential suspects.

"Miss Sciuto," he greeted her, "I'm Detective Sergeant Hathaway."

"Nice to meet you, Sergeant Hathaway," she chirped. "Or do I have to say the whole Detective Sergeant thing like if you were a Rear Admiral or a Lieutenant Colonel?"

He didn't really seem to go for expressions so far, but she would still bet that he wasn't sure how to respond to her greeting. Not that that was new.

"Sergeant Hathaway is fine, Miss Sciuto," he said courteously, and then glanced down at his notepad. "I understand you're an employee of the United States Navy, here on holiday?"

It was a yes or no question, which meant she could answer it completely truthfully and still tell him absolutely nothing useful. She wouldn't do that, though. Sergeant Hathaway was a fellow member of the law enforcement community and she wanted to be helpful to him. She also didn't want to get arrested for murder. That would really not be a good vacation memory.

"Yes. I work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which you should just call NCIS. It's much faster," she confirmed. "It's 0500 there if I'm doing the timezone conversion right, so it's hard to call and verify my employment and vacation plans, but if someone at your precinct or whatever wants to give it a shot later, I can tell you who to ask for in HR so you don't get stuck in a game of never-ending Voicemail Tag."

He definitely hadn't expected her to be that loquacious, she was sure of it, but he nodded seriously anyway and said, "Thank you. What time did you arrive here today, Miss Sciuto?"

"Ten. I got up and found caffeine and then had breakfast, because that is definitely the right order for those two things, and then I decided to walk around and look at buildings. And so I was walking along here listening to all the bells chime ten at slightly different times when I saw a foot sticking out of a place that a foot shouldn't be," she recounted.

That got her a fraction of a smile, which at least proved that he didn't have some kind of medical condition that left him unable to smile. That would have been a shame, because she was pretty sure his entire face would be transformed if he really smiled. He had that kind of cranial structure.

"And you investigated the, er, foot?" he prompted.

"Of course not. I know about maintaining a crime scene," she said indignantly, but it was justified. As if she would make their forensics team's job any harder than it was already going to be with this being such a public place. "And also this is totally not my jurisdiction unless you find a US Navy ID card on that poor lady. But my eyes work, and so does my brain."

"What is it that you do for the NCIS?" he asked next, and if she was going to guess, she'd say that particular lack of expression was puzzled, but she was probably wrong. It was like trying to decipher Gibbs at his most stone-faced. She'd told the Constable what she did already, of course, but it was completely normal to make a witness repeat their statements in case they left something out or were lying like Pinocchio, so she didn't mind.

"I'm the Chief Forensic Technician," she replied, and pulled out her NCIS ID, which she carried along with her passport because she was a prepared traveler. She didn't usually title drop, but in this case it was relevant and the ID backed her up.

Sergeant Hathaway raised his eyebrows minutely after examining both of her documents closely and she raised hers right back. Maybe she didn't really look like a Chief Forensic Technician for a federal agency, but he didn't really look like a policeman, either. She would have gone with indie rocker, actually, if she had to pick something, and not just because he clearly played guitar and smoked.

"Can anyone verify your whereabouts this morning before you arrived here?"

It was a standard question, but he sort of seemed to relax after seeing her credentials, which was nice. She understood the suspicion and the reasons behind it, but she was glad to see it go away a little, too. She wasn't the bad guy here. Or bad girl. Or bad whatever, since gender wasn't a binary construct.

"Well, the barista and I had a long talk about the difference between American tea and English tea, and the waitress at the cafe next to my hotel just got an adorable little puppy and she showed me pictures. They'll probably both remember me," she said, shrugging.

"Thank you, Miss Sciuto," he said very firmly, probably to make sure she didn't say anything else. "When do you leave Oxford?"

"Next Thursday. I'm actually probably going to need to come back to see everything. You'd think this place has been here for a thousand years or something," she said, with an over-exaggerated who knew kind of face. "I like the churches. They're so beautiful and peaceful. "

He definitely hadn't expected her to say that she liked churches, but he recovered well. Policemen got told things they didn't expect to hear all the time. He should be used to it.

""Peace is always beautiful'," he quoted, and she laughed happily and in surprise. She'd just heard something she didn't expect to hear, too. Point to the Sergeant.

"Walt Whitman! Nice," she said approvingly. "Got any suggestions about which churches I should definitely see, Sergeant? I mean, not that you're a walking Oxford guidebook or anything, but if you have any suggestions for me, I'll take them."

That might have been a little flirty. The sergeant was cute and clearly smart and also indie rockerish, hence, flirty. He didn't seem to notice, but that might have been because an older dude was calling him over to look at something.

"Excuse me, Miss Sciuto," he said courteously, and turned to go. She thought he wasn't going to answer her question, but he turned back briefly and said, "You might like Christ Church Cathedral or St. Mary the Virgin."

"Thanks!" she chirped, and watched as he conferred with the older dude. Serious personal space violations going on there, which reminded her of her team. Speaking of her team, she had better call Gibbs and let him know someone was going to be getting a transatlantic phone call.

-

She'd been cleared of the murder, obviously, since she didn't do it, and actually had maybe developed a potential interagency cooperation relationship with the Oxfordshire police, which would make Director Vance happy, and now she was walking into one of the churches Sergeant Hathaway had mentioned. There was a jazz-madrigal-Gregorian hyphenated thingie that had sounded interesting.

She didn't genuflect since this wasn't a Catholic church, but she did kneel and pray briefly for the woman in the hedge before she sat back in the pew and looked up at the chancel where the hyphenated thingie was warming up. Then she blinked. Sergeant Hathaway was up there. With a guitar. Wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Looking good enough to eat, yum. She beamed at him, not that he seemed to notice, and settled back to enjoy the music.

Oxford was supercool. And Sergeant Hathaway was totally an indie rocker.


End file.
